History of English Literature - ORBi

114 Pages·2010·0.61 MB·English

History of

English Literature

st
(1 part, down to 1603)

Paulette Michel-Michot, Marc Delrez,

Christine Pagnoulle

1
CONTENTS

Prologue_______________________________________________________________________________ 4
The Old English period___________________________________________________________________ 7
1. Historical background _____________________________________________________________ 7
2. Old English poetry _______________________________________________________________ 10
Secular poetry______________________________________________________________________ 10
Heroic poetry ____________________________________________________________________ 10
Elegiac poetry____________________________________________________________________ 16
Riddles _________________________________________________________________________ 17
Gnomic verse ____________________________________________________________________ 18
Religious poetry ____________________________________________________________________ 18
3. Old English prose ______________________________________________________________ 20
Anglo-Latin prose___________________________________________________________________ 20
Old English secular prose_____________________________________________________________ 21
Religious prose_____________________________________________________________________ 22
The Middle English period (1066-1485)_____________________________________________________ 24
1. Historical background __________________________________________________________ 24
2. Middle English prose ___________________________________________________________ 29
Early religious prose in English ________________________________________________________ 29
Later religious prose works____________________________________________________________ 30
More prose works___________________________________________________________________ 32
3. Middle English narrative poetry____________________________________________________ 33
Religious didactic poetry _____________________________________________________________ 33
Secular didactic poetry_______________________________________________________________ 33
Verse romances_____________________________________________________________________ 35
The fabliau ________________________________________________________________________ 43
The fable__________________________________________________________________________ 44
Ballads ___________________________________________________________________________ 45
4. Middle English lyrical poetry ____________________________________________________ 46
Secular lyrics ______________________________________________________________________ 46
Religious lyrics_____________________________________________________________________ 48
5. The alliterative revival (14th century) _____________________________________________ 48
The ‘Pearl poet’ ____________________________________________________________________ 49
Piers Plowman_____________________________________________________________________ 50
6. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)____________________________________________________ 52
7. Chaucer's epigones_____________________________________________________________ 58
8. Drama _______________________________________________________________________ 59
The origins of drama_________________________________________________________________ 59
Miracles or Mystery plays ____________________________________________________________ 60
The Morality play___________________________________________________________________ 61
May-games________________________________________________________________________ 62
The interlude_______________________________________________________________________ 63
9. Poetry in the 15th Century ___________________________________________________________ 63
10. Prose in the 15th Century___________________________________________________________ 64
a. Religious prose_________________________________________________________________ 64
b. Secular prose_____________________________________________________________________ 65
2 2
The Renaissance _______________________________________________________________________ 67
1. The Early Tudors (1485-1558)______________________________________________________ 67
Intellectual background and the evolution of prose _________________________________________ 68
Poetry____________________________________________________________________________ 72
Lyrical poetry____________________________________________________________________ 72
Satirical verse____________________________________________________________________ 75
Drama____________________________________________________________________________ 76
2. The reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603)____________________________________________________ 77
Translation ________________________________________________________________________ 78
Poetry____________________________________________________________________________ 79
Lyrical poetry____________________________________________________________________ 79
Narrative poetry __________________________________________________________________ 83
Philip Sidney (1554-86) ____________________________________________________________ 84
Edmund Spenser (1552-99) _________________________________________________________ 87
Prose_____________________________________________________________________________ 90
Prose narratives___________________________________________________________________ 90
Miscellaneous prose – rhetoric, pamphlet, guidebook _____________________________________ 93
Drama____________________________________________________________________________ 94
First comedies in English ___________________________________________________________ 94
First tragedies in English ___________________________________________________________ 97
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)______________________________________________________ 98
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)_____________________________________________________ 102
Under Elizabeth _________________________________________________________________ 103
Under James I (1603-25) __________________________________________________________ 108

Note : We strongly recommend that students ask themselves and their tutors
questions on whatever is unclear, that they compare the information provided
here with other reference books to be found in the library, and that they use
other on-line resources, for instance The Cambridge History of English and
American Literature, http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/ ;
also useful for historical references, the BBC website,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ , with a clear timeline..
.
Tutors’ email addresses: [email protected] and [email protected].
3 3
PROLOGUE
The British Islands have long been the last areas of land reached by people migrating
west from continental Europe. The first hunter-gatherers who settled there some 100
centuries (or 400 generations) before the beginning of recorded history hardly left
anything for us to determine who they may have been. Over this long span of time
many small-scale societies must have developed, merged, split and disappeared.
The Neolithic (or New Stone Age) inhabitants of the islands may have come
from the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula or even the North African coast. The first stage in
the building of Stonehenge can be traced to them. After 2400 BC new groups of people
arrived from Europe. They were round-headed and strongly built, taller than Neolithic
Britons. It is not known whether they invaded by armed force, were invited over because
of their military and metal-working skills, or just wandered in and settled. Their arrival
is marked by the first individual graves, furnished with pottery beakers, from which
these people get their name. The Beaker people probably spoke an Indo-European
language. They also brought skills to make bronze tools and these began to replace stone
ones. But they took over many of the old ways, the stone circles or 'henges' in particular,
with Stonehenge as something of a cultural and possibly political centre until 1300 BC.
While there is extensive archaeological evidence about when and where
sandstones and bluestones were erected (see websites on Stonehenge) the purpose and
function of these earth and stone circles are still unknown, and probably changed over
the centuries. The Beaker people’s richest graves are to be found in such circles. They
can be seen in many places, as far as the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, and as far
south as Cornwall.
However, from about 1300 BC onwards, the henge civilization seems to have
become less important, and was overtaken by a new form of society in southern
England, that of a settled farming class. At first this farming society developed in order
to feed the people at the henges, but eventually it became more important and powerful
as it grew richer, as is testified by family villages and fortified enclosures.
Around 700 BC the country was invaded by Celtic tribes that had crossed over
from central Europe in search of empty lands for settlement. Our knowledge of the Celts
is limited, but we know that their technology included the use of iron, which made it
possible for them to farm heavy soils. The fact that they lived in towns or ‘hill-forts’
4 4
suggests that they were highly successful farmers, capable of growing enough food for a
large population. The Celtic tribes were ruled over by a warrior class, of which the
priests, or Druids, seem to have been particularly important members. These Druids
were apparently not interested in developing writing and reading skills; they memorised
all the religious teachings, tribal laws, history, medicine, and other knowledge necessary
in Celtic society. Druids from different tribes all over Britain probably met once a year.
They had no temples, but they met in sacred groves of trees, on certain hills, by rivers or
by river sources. We know little of their kind of worship except that it emphasised the
connection between man and nature (this would at times involve ritual sacrifices).
During the Celtic period women may have had a certain degree of independence,
certainly more than they were to experience for several hundreds of years afterwards.
When the Romans invaded Britain two of the largest tribes were ruled by women who
fought from their chariots. The most powerful Celt to stand up to the Romans was a
woman, Boudica. She had become queen of her tribe after her husband had died. In 61
AD she led her tribe against the Romans, nearly drove them from Britain, and destroyed
London, the Roman capital, before she was defeated and killed. Roman writers
commented on the courage and strength of women in battle, which definitely suggests a
measure of equality between the sexes among the richer Celts.
Julius Caesar first came to Britain in 55 BC, but it was not until almost a century
later, in 43 AD, that a Roman army actually occupied Britain.1 Originally, the Romans
had invaded the island because the Celts of Britain were working with the Celts of Gaul
against them. The British Celts were giving food to their European counterparts, and
were allowing them to hide in Britain. The Romans decided to reverse this logic, and to
make use of British food for their own army fighting the Gauls.
The Romans brought the skills of reading and writing to Britain, and eventually they
christianised the Celts. They established a Romano-British culture across the southern
half of Britain, as far north as the River Humber and as far west as the River Severn.
This part of Britain was inside the empire. Beyond were upland areas that Rome could
barely control. These areas were kept an eye on from the towns of York, of Chester, and
of Caerleon in the western peninsula of Britain that later became known as Wales. The
Romans could not conquer ‘Caledonia’, as they called Scotland, although they spent
over a century trying to do so. They eventually built a strong wall along the northern

1
The name ‘Britain’ comes from the word ‘Pretani’, the Celtic word by which the inhabitants
of the islands referred to themselves. The Romans mispronounced the word and called the island
‘Britannia’.
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border, named after the emperor Hadrian, who had planned it. At the time, Hadrian’s
wall was intended to keep out raiders from the north.
Roman control of Britain came to an end as the empire began to collapse. The first
signs were the attacks by Celts of Caledonia in 367 AD. The Roman legions found it
more and more difficult to stop the raiders from crossing Hadrian’s wall. The same was
happening on the European mainland as Germanic groups, Saxons and Franks, began to
raid the coast of Gaul. In 409 AD Rome pulled its last soldiers out of Britain and the
Romano-British were left to fight alone against the Scots and the Irish, and against the
Saxon raiders crossing from Germany. The latter gradually triumphed over the
defenceless Romanised Celts in the course of the 5th century. The survivors among
these Christian Celts were thus pushed westwards into Cornwall, the mountains of
Wales, northwards to Scotland, and across the sea to Ireland. (A legendary Celtic king
who fought against the Germanic tribes is King Arthur, who is still well-known to us
through the legends of the Round Table.)
The long history of invasions – or migrations – had not come to an end. Later, in the
8th and 9th centuries Vikings would come and raid and settle; in the 11th century the
political and cultural history of the island took a radical turn with the Norman invasion;
and the 20th century would see another kind of migration: the massive arrival of people
from former British colonies, mainly the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.
The people who had lived in Britain before the Germanic invasions obviously had a
developed culture, which included tale telling and poetry. However, until the
introduction of christianity and the industrious writing down to which monks were
committed we hardly have any trace of them because they only existed orally. There is a
rich Celtic literature, developed both in Wales and in Ireland, but the present course
focuses on English literature, which begins with the settling of Angles, Saxons and
Jutes.

(See http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/ ,
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/boudicca.html )

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THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD
1. Historical background

Two important events affected the island of Britain in the Old English period (also
called the Anglo-Saxon period).
1) The Anglo-Saxon invasions. The Anglo-Saxon invaders came to Britain in the latter
part of the 5th century, after the Romans had left the country unprotected. Actually the
invaders came from three powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, the Angles, and the
Jutes. The Jutes settled mainly in Kent and along the south coast. The Angles settled in
the east, and also in the north Midlands, while the Saxons settled between the Angles
and the Jutes in a band of land from the Thames estuary westwards. The Anglo-Saxon
migrations gave the larger part of Britain its name,2 its language, and its links with
Germania (i.e., the great body of Teutonic tribes whose migrations disrupted the Roman
Empire).
To the Romans, these people were barbarians who appeared out of nowhere and
endangered the political structure of the Empire as well as its recently acquired Christian
ideology: these Germanic tribes were ‘pagans’,3 their ways of thinking were alien to the
Romans.
2) Re-introduction of christianity. The second main event of the period is the conversion
of these tribes — who had by then settled in England — to Christianity. In 597 Pope
Gregory the Great sent a monk called Augustine4 from Rome in order to (re)establish
Christianity in England.5 He began by converting the Jutes (who had established
themselves in the south-east), because the king’s wife came from Europe and was
already Christian. Augustine became the first archbishop of Canterbury (the capital of
the Jutes) in 601. Several ruling families in England accepted Christianity. But
Augustine and his group of monks made little progress with ordinary people. This was

2
The word ‘England’ means ‘the land of the Angles’.
3
Derived from the Latin word for village ‘paganus’, the word is used to refer to people who
are not Christians.
4
Not to be confused with the other, more famous, Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo in
North Africa.
5
Several Roman-British kingdoms had become Christian before the Germanic people came to
settle: the new religion had been officially recognised by Emperor Constantine in 313 and it
comforted its immediate appeal by merging with local traditions.
7 7
partly because Augustine was interested in establishing Christian authority, and that
meant bringing rulers to the new faith.
It was the Celtic Christian Church which brought Christianity to the ordinary people
of Britain. While the bishops from the Roman Church lived at the courts of the kings,
which they made centres of Church power across England, the Celtic missionaries went
out from their monasteries of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, walking from village to
village teaching Christianity. The two Christian traditions disagreed on such matters as
vestment and tonsure, ways of deciding on liturgical dates such as Easter, but also on a
much more fundamental issue: the Celtic brand of Christianity was Pelagian (after the
name of the Breton monk Pelagius, which means 'he of the sea', end of the 4th beginning
of the 5th century), i.e. it did not subscribe to the notion of the original sin, introduced
first by Paul and later defined by the African Augustine. We are born free of sin and can
achieve grace by our free will, away from the trappings of the Church. In 663 at the
Synod (meeting) of Whitby the king of Northumbria decided in favour of the Roman
approach, partly out of concern for easier contact with the rest of the (Western) Christian
world but also to comfort the institutional power of the prelates. The Celtic Church was
declared heretical, and its influence retreated as Rome extended its authority over all
Christians, even in Celtic parts of the island.
Although the Anglo-Saxons formed the bedrock, or the foundations, of English
culture, they themselves underwent, and benefited from, many foreign influences in the
course of time (there is never such a thing as a ‘pure’ race or a ‘pure’ culture — such a
thing is always a myth, and usually a dangerous one). At the end of the 8th century and
in the 9th century, the Anglo-Saxons in their turn had to face the invasions of the
Vikings6 coming from Norway and Denmark. The king of Wessex, Alfred the Great
(848-899), established himself as a figure of resistance against the Danes, unified the
little kingdoms of the south of England against the common enemy, and finally defeated
the Danes in 878. He christianised them and allowed them to settle in eastern and central
England where they gradually mixed with the local population.
The Danish invasions started anew in the 10th and early 11th centuries. One of their
leaders (who was king of Sweden and also became king of Norway) even became king
of England: Canute (or Cnut). He reigned until 1035. Canute worked hard to unite his
Danish and Saxon peoples. He also developed trading links with the continent. When he

6
A word which refers to “the practice of marauding or piracy” (OED).
8 8
died, the Witan7 chose Edward, the son of the Saxon king Ethelred, as his successor.
Edward had been brought up in an abbey and was called Edward the Confessor, because
he was more interested in the Church than in kingship. Under his reign the Saxon lords
were unable to prevent the spread of Norman influence and power, because Edward had
spent most of his life in Normandy, his mother (Ethelred’s wife) being a daughter of the
Duke of Normandy.8 Yet on his death-bed, in 1066, Edward chose Harold of Wessex, a
Saxon baron, to be king in his place; but, predictably enough, the throne was claimed by
the kings of Norway and Denmark because of their family ties with Canute, and by Duke
William of Normandy, more or less for the same reasons — he was Edward's cousin.
Harold managed to defeat an invading army from Norway, but a few days later he had to
face another invasion by Duke William, who landed on the Sussex coast and defeated
the Saxons at Hastings in 1066. On Christmas Day, 1066, William the Norman, now
known as William the Conqueror, was crowned king of England (in Edward’s new
church of Westminster Abbey).
As in much of western Europe at the time, two ways of life and thought gradually
merged, namely the Germanic and the Christian traditions. The Anglo-Saxons had their
own (non-Christian) religion,9 and their way of life and social organisation reflected
heroic ideals of bravery, loyalty, and physical courage, which were far removed from the
Christian ideal of (qualified) meekness preached by the Roman and Irish missionaries.
Most of the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period is associated with these two main
trends of thought: either the stories were brought over by the invading tribes and dealt
with their Germanic way of life (often related to life at sea), or they were Christian
stories derived from the Bible or from legends about saints.

7
An Anglo-Saxon institution akin to a King’s Council. The Witan probably grew out of senior
warriors and churchmen to whom kings had turned for advice or support on difficult matters. By the
tenth century it had become a formal body, issuing laws and charters (though a king could ignore the
Witan’s advice, however dangerous it might be for him to do so).
8
As their name suggests, the Normans were people from the north. They were the descendants
of Vikings who had captured, and settled in, northern France. They had soon become French in their
language and Christian in their religion. But they were still well-known for their fighting skills.
For an idea of the complexity of politics at the time (and to dispel any notion that things were
simpler in the past), see http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon20.html.
9
Christians called them heathens or pagans. They worshipped gods like Wotan (god of war,
knowledge and poetry), Thor (god of thunder), or Freija (goddess of love) whose names have survived
in the names of days: 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday.'
9 9
The literature of the Old English period was recorded in manuscripts, the majority of
which were lost in wars, fires, or because the monasteries (which were the centres of
culture and learning) were destroyed at the time of the Danish invasions. It is written in
Old English, which is the English language at an early stage in its development, when it
still had inflections.10 As a language it was not unified — it consisted of various dialects.
Note that all illustrations provided in this syllabus are translations into modern English,
not the original texts which at this stage in your studies would be utterly
incomprehensible.
Old English literature begins with poetry, not with prose. The earlier texts were
based on a tradition of oral poetry brought over by the Germanic invaders, and dealing
with their life back in Germania,11 or during their migrations over land and on sea. This
oral poetry was then written down by clerics12 in the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon
England, i.e., after the beginning of the christianisation of the country in the 7th century.
2. Old English poetry

Secular poetry

Heroic poetry

Old English heroic poetry is in fact the nearest we can get to the oral tradition of the
heroic age of Germania. The technique used in Anglo-Saxon poetry (stressed
alliterative verse, see below) is clearly the product of an oral tradition. Poems were
recited by gleemen, or jongleurs, that is, 'itinerant medieval entertainers proficient in
juggling, acrobatics, music, and recitation' (Merriam-Webster); when particularly
skilled and attached to a court, theses minstrels were called 'scops.' Most of the time,
these poems (that were practically always set to music) were intended for an aristocratic
audience. Yet among those early testimonies of Anglo-Saxon literature we also find the
following three lines that are a ploughman's greeting to the earth when ploughing his
first furrow:
Hal wes thu, folde, fira modor,

10
An inflection is a change in the form of a word (usually a modification or affixation),
signalling changes in such grammatical functions as tense, person, gender, number, or case.
11 'Germania' is a word coined to refer to wherever Germanic peoples were roaming; it has
nothing to do with Germany.
12
Members of the clergy.
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